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Thank you to the 130 people who joined us for our fun & educational webinar on Starting Influencer Engagement with Cheryl Contee of Fission Strategy and Roz Lemieux of Attentive.ly!
Here are a few tweets from our audience during and after the webinar:
In case you missed the webinar, here is a brief recap....

Thank you to the 130 people who joined us for our fun & educational webinar on Starting Influencer Engagement with Cheryl Contee of Fission Strategy and Roz Lemieux of Attentive.ly!

Here are a few tweets from our audience during and after the webinar:

In case you missed the webinar, here is a brief recap. You can also view the webinar deck on Facebook!

Nonprofits can massively extend their reach through the social networks of their supporters. Here’s what Attentive.ly found when we evaluated 90 of our nonprofit clients representing nearly 20M supporters.

We’ve known for years that organizations have influencers on their lists and that those folks have a large reach - the top 5% of influencers reach 85% of your entire network reach, more than 240x the people in your CRM. If you engage 1% of the influencers, you’d reach hundreds of thousands, win big and reach far more than you could otherwise. At a 1% response rate or 36 respondents, that means your reach is 338k people.

With some extra effort, and most likely an influencer program, a 10% response rate of your top influencers means you’d reach 3.3M with only 360 people taking action. Talk about a national day of action!

Influencers are game changers because of their reach and the trust their audience has for what they say and who & what they endorse or promote. They almost always have a large Twitter following, lots of Facebook friends, and a blog. The goal here is to expand your network reach by tapping into other people’s networks.

According to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), an influencer is a person or group of people who change their opinion or behavior as a result of exposure to new information and there are five categories of influencers. While we agree with their definition, to make things simple, we will stick to three main categories which you can build from: VIPs, Professionals, and Citizens.

From a broad marketing perspective, anyone who isn’t a celebrity or professional, is a Citizen Influencer, though with fewer connections. This generally means: current supporters (those in your email lists) who have 500+ social media connections with 40-60 Klout score. We love this group because they are often overlooked, yet constitute a powerful force as a group.

Even if you aren’t the CEO of T-Mobile, those with a certain professional standing will usually carry a level of influence comparable to their position. The litmus test for members of this category is either credibility (doctor approved!) or access to a target community (C-suite, educators, tech, media). They will tend to have a Klout score between 60 and 80. With a Klout score of 68 and over 12,000 connections, Clay Johnson is a great example of someone you’d want to enlist as an influencer if you’re looking to deepen reach in the Big Data/Open Government community. The reason they have reach is because it’s part of their job.

Finally, VIP Influencers. This kind of social media celebrity could massively expand your network reach if his affinity and past interactions match-up. An Instagram account with 2 million followers is merely a modern extension to the age-old idea of “celebrity.” Statements on Twitter can have as much impact as a press release, especially when someone has the power to influence an industry or sector.

They aren’t difficult to spot. There’s a good chance you have dozens or even hundreds in your email lists already, which is where we recommend beginning. Influencers might be tweeting about your efforts already, and you haven’t noticed. Here’s how to spot them and take notice, so that the next time they tweet it doesn’t go unnoticed.

Earthjustice and Fission worked together on the Mountain Heroes campaign to raise awareness about mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. Part of our strategy to reach new audiences involved reaching out to VIPs like Edward Norton, Woody Harrelson, Daryl Hannah, and celebrity blogs Ecorazzi and FitPerez who discussed the celebrities’ involvement. One photo post on social got over 1,300 likes when Woody Harrelson shared his spiritual message about mountaintop removal, breaking Earthjustice social media records. The campaign was designed to help encourage everyday heroes to submit their own photo micro-stories in support of stopping mountaintop mining. Together, through reaching traditional, regional and online VIPs in addition to a comprehensive grassroots digital outreach campaign, we were able to blow past Earthjustice’s goals for submitted photos. Those photo petitions were presented to the White House & EPA and later led to Patriot Coal promising to cease mountaintop removal. Success!

VIPs are a high-touch, long-tail program which can take months to bear fruit. Chances are, you aren’t the only organization or agency fighting for the attention of a celebrity or VIP. And it’s important to note that today, VIPs are not just the folks you see on tv or hear on radio. As we referenced earlier, the internet has opened the opportunity for many more people to become online VIPS, making broad ally outreach more accessible than ever. Do your homework and find out if there are online VIPs with a Klout score of 80-100 who may be willing to support your cause.

Instead of asking them to buy or donate, you can ask influencers to promote your brand or organization to their network (providing they are talking about the keywords / affinities you are tracking) in return for a similar kind of reward you are giving to citizen influencers.

We will be circulating a brand new marketing guide in the next few days. We've put a lot of work into it and can't wait to hear what you think. Keep an eye out for it!

From Our Clients

I am speechless that in around a year we have been able to get where we are - and your team has been with us every step of the way. In particular I have to say that many people around here consider Kelly Rand a miracle worker. She deserves a hug, a beer, and a big piece of praise for everything that happened yesterday [at the March FOR America]. Thanks!

Nicola Wells, Reform Immigration for America

"[You've] been fast, flexible, extremely high quality, and very affordable to work with as we've built US Ignite from the ground up."

"Just a quick note to say THANKS again for all of the terrific work you’re doing on the 'America’s Kids, America’s Future' budget campaign. Voices President and CEO Bill Bentley is heading out to a KIDS COUNT steering committee meeting at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and he’s bringing along copies of the infographics!"

Roberta Heine, Vice President of Communications and Marketing

Roberta Heine, Voices for America's Children

Thanks again to you and your entire team - the site looks wonderful and we're very excited!

Roberta Heine, Voices for America's Children

"I want to say that I was very impressed with what we did with you, you were proactively providing things I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking for. Your account management was excellent."

"First the good news: The White House got our tweets loud and clear, and now they're on the fence about funding. We could tip them over to reaching our goals in the next few days. Now, better news: it gives us an excuse to roll out the White House Twitter action again.”

Garth MooreDeputy Director, US New MediaONE.org

"Hey guys, I just wanted to thank everyone for your help yesterday. The tool worked great, the site looked great, and all-in-all yesterday was highly successful. I got a lot of nice comments from people throughout the day. Appreciate all your hard work, flexibility, and fast-response time."

"Beka and Austen - I really value our partnership and the chance to work with you both. You are fantastic advocates and creative thinkers, and it is a pleasure to be 'in business' with you. Here’s to 2011 and creating change!"

Dan Furmansky, Campaign Manager

http://standingonthesideoflove.org/

Dan Furmansky, Standing on the Side of Love

Really great work, you guys. This is awesome. I’m seeing RT’s all over my feed.

Just wanted to say a big, huge thank you for all your work over the past few days week month year. In particular, the time you took late last night and early this morning... We raised more than $14,000 in the last ten hours, and I just wanted to express my gratitude, and that of the whole RI4A team, to you for making it happen.

John Brian McCarthy, Campaign to Reform Immigration FOR America

"This is fantastic! I am really happy about all this content! You guys really cranked this out! Thanks so much Sam and team."

"Thank you soooo much. I really can’t express the gratitude for bringing my website back from the dead."

Lauren Glickman

Just wanted to say thanks again for your very generous contribution of time & expertise to ZeroDivide and the ZD grantees. IMHO your presentation was really rich both on a strategic and a nuts & bolts level. Great job!

Paul LambPrincipal at Man On A Mission Consulting

The campaign scored international headlines, and the Christian Science Monitor ran a story on the “innovative and impressive use of social media”.

Our Staff Says

The internet provides a platform for people to connect around important issues and allows their voices to be heard and amplified. This ability to quickly organize brings about social change like never before.

Jennifer OReilly Mott Strategist

Today's customers, donors, and members expect more than an email blast. Find out what your contacts are saying on social media, who has Klout, and what topics, hashtags, and URLs are trending among the people who matter most to your business or organization.